“Call park” is a feature of some telephone systems that allows a person to put a call on hold at one telephone set and continue the conversation from another telephone set. The call park feature is typically most often used by businesses operating out of warehouses, buildings with many offices, or multi-floor complexes, where there is a likelihood that certain calls may need to be taken over by someone in a different area, in a different office or on a different floor.
Specifically, in the case of an incoming call, if the desired called party is not the person who picked up the call, and the desired called party is at an unknown location, the person who picked up the call may “park” the call and then use a public address (PA) system or other method to invite the desired called party to pick up the call.
Alternatively, during a conversation, a person may need to go to another office for some reason (for example, to retrieve an important file); parking the call allows this person to continue the conversation after arriving at the other office.
The “call park” feature is activated by pressing a preprogrammed button (usually labeled “Call Park”) or a special sequence of buttons. The telephone system transfers the current telephone conversation to an unused extension number and immediately puts the conversation on hold. Thus, in essence, activating the call park feature causes an extension number to be temporarily assigned to an ongoing call. The telephone system then displays the extension number of the parked call so that the call can be retrieved within a set time.
The call can now be retrieved by dialing the extension number of the parked call from any telephone set. If no one picks up the parked call within the set time, the telephone system may ring back the parked call, in this way transferring the parked call back to the person who originally activated the call park feature.
While the availability of a call park feature as described above is common in many business environments, its proliferation amongst small businesses and residential customers is minimal. This is because the usefulness of the call park feature to a small business or residence tends to be outweighed by the cost and complexity of the specialized equipment currently required to implement this feature. For instance, a telephone system capable of implementing the signaling and logic described above is required, as are telephone sets capable of displaying the extension number of a parked call.
As a result, instead of proceeding to park a call as would be done in a large office environment, most small business and residential customers who own multiple telephone sets connected to a single telephone line continue to follow the age-old paradigm of telling the other party on the line “please wait a minute”, yelling out someone's name, waiting for that someone to actually pick up the call, and then hanging up. This can be an inconvenience, particularly when the person originally on the call is needed elsewhere during the waiting period and cannot return to hang up the phone. Problems also arise in large households, as well as in environments where yelling is impermissible or considered uncouth.
Therefore, a need remains in the industry to lower the cost and complexity of providing a call park feature to small businesses, residences and other users.